For the last four years,
federal probation offices have been authorized to use a new drug testing
device, a patch worn on the body that absorbs and collects components of
sweat, including drugs. Now in widespread use at US probation offices,
the sweat patch, manufactured by PharmChem Laboratories of Menlo Park,
California, was supposed to enhance law enforcement efforts to catch drug
users.

But dogged federal defenders
in Nevada, where the US probation office has used the patch since 1997,
have blown a huge hole in its reliability. Fallout has so far been
limited mainly to Nevada, but could spread across the US Court system.
It could also scuttle PharmChem's grand vision of widespread adoption of
the patch in the federal workplace.

Nevada defenders had for
the past 2 1/2 years sought to challenge the patch in court after hearing
repeated complaints from federal probationers who bitterly denied they
were using drugs despite positive results from the patch.

Then, in dramatic testimony
at a November 30th federal court hearing in Las Vegas, a prosecution witness
unexpectedly bolstered the federal defenders' claim that the patch picks
up environmental contaminants, thus causing false positive drug test results.
The testimony has also prompted federal court officials in Nevada and the
local US Attorney's Office to think again about relying on the patch.

At the hearing, in the case
of a woman accused of violating the conditions of her release after the
patch indicated she had used cocaine, PharmChem toxicologist James Meeker
stunned prosecutors when he revealed that PharmChem's own in-house tests
found evidence of external contamination.

Meeker described studies
in which researchers placed a tiny amount of cocaine -- invisible to the
naked eye -- on the skin of five subjects. Researchers then wiped
the skin with isopropyl alcohol before applying the patch. Two of
the five subjects tested positive for cocaine, Meeker testified.
He also revealed that PharmChem was concerned enough about the patch's
reliability that it contracted with an independent lab to conduct further
tests.

Although Meeker testified
that he still believed the patch "is acceptable and reliable to determine
drug use," the damage was already done. Within days of Meeker's testimony,
prosecutors ended their effort to revoke the woman's release.

"We didn't want to be in
a position where we were trying to revoke somebody based on science that
wasn't sound," Assistant US Attorney Joseph Sullivan told the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. "We decided to step back and see whether the potential
for contamination is legitimate."

Then US probation officials
in Nevada stepped in to announce that, in light of Meeker's testimony,
they will no longer use patch test results as the sole basis for violating
federal probationers or those on supervised release. Until the patch's
reliability can be confirmed, US probation officers in Nevada will use
other indicators of drug use, such as urine tests and eyewitness accounts
to corroborate the patch.

"We think the sweat patch
is a great drug detection device," said senior US probation officer Mike
Severance. "The problem is it may be too good," he told the Review-Journal.

Meanwhile, concerns about
the patch resulted in two more aborted revocation hearings. In mid-December,
US probation officials in Las Vegas withdrew a revocation petition against
a man whose patch came back positive for methamphetamines.

"We would now request that
this petition be withdrawn due to new evidence shared with our office by
PharmChem Laboratories which has shown the patch may have returned positive
due to environmental contaminants," the prosecutors wrote in court documents.

And in an early sign of the
potential national impact, federal prosecutors in Oakland late in December
declined to proceed with a revocation hearing after learning of Meeker's
testimony.

That's not enough for Franny
Forsman, the head federal public defender for Nevada. "I think it
should be pulled off the market until the problems are fixed," she told
the Review-Journal. "This thing ought not to be used because it is
being used in this city to take people's kids away and to put people in
jail."

In addition to the federal
courts, judges in the Clark County (Las Vegas) Family Courts have been
using the patch when parents in custody battles make allegations of drug
use.

The sweat patch is good business
for PharmChem. In Nevada, probation official Severance told the Review-Journal,
PharmChem gets $5 for each patch and $20 for each test. US probation
officials in Nevada used 850 patches in 2000.

But PharmChem wants to get
the patch into the federal workplace, where its potential customer base
would be in the hundreds of thousands.

"If it gets into the workplace,
it's a lucrative proposition for PharmChem," said Forsman, who spearheaded
the campaign against the patch.

PharmChem may have to reevaluate
its plans, though. Now, thanks to the efforts of Forsman and the
Nevada federal defenders, the patch is fair game across the country.

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